We must end the mistaken idea that carbon emissions cause global warming and climate change. Carbon emissions have no effect on either. The mistake occurred when scientists examining ice core samples noticed that every warm period in history was accompanied by high levels of carbon and jumped to a conclusion that the carbon caused the warming.

A better conclusion would have been that the heat to warm the area resulted from combustion, burning hydrocarbons, wood, grass, trees. The products of combustion are heat and carbon products. The heat warmed the globe and the carbon products are air pollutant. The carbon products are in two forms, depending on the efficiency of combustion, carbon dioxide and free carbon (smoke). Natural gas is more efficient and is higher in carbon dioxide while coal is less efficient and results in more smoke.

Carbon dioxide is a transparent gaslike oxygen and nitrogen and does not block heat transmission. A natural component of the atmosphere, it doesn’t block transmission so it cannot block heat and has no effect on heating the globe. Free carbons are an atmospheric pollutant and like any pollutant it blocks heat transmission, more solar radiation is blocked than global emissions, so there is a reduction of global heat or the globe is cooled by smoke from combustion.

Carbon emissions have no effect on global warming or climate change.

The meeting of climate scientists in Kyoto, Japan, in 2007 came to the conclusion that carbon emissions caused global warming, we now know that they were wrong.

Environmentalists all believed this and started a campaign to eliminate carbon emissions before they caused drastic temperature increases and destroyed the planet. When President Obama was elected in 2005, he adopted this theory as a goal of his presidency; he would save the planet by reducing carbon emissions.

He declared “war” on fossil fuels. He restricted drilling for oil and gas. He shut down the coal industry, our lowest cost and most abundant energy supply, by having the EPA lower the emission standards until plants were forced to close. We had to purchase our energy overseas, imposing a burden on our economy of $700 billion. The price of oil increased. Private companies were responsible for our energy independence but our president claimed the credit. His energy policy and his universal health care would have driven the collapse of our economy.

We have gone from our first president who could not tell a lie to our current president who could not tell the truth about carbon emissions. His energy policy plus spending have made our choice of our next president vital to our future. While the Democrats are obligated to support the last seven years, the Republicans must explain how their silence on the carbon emissions allowed the issue to destroy our economy.

The non-partisan watchdog group Open The Books released a mid-November 2015 report showing how the EPA has become a “well-armed militia” with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on questionable expenses. These include “high-end luxury furnishings, sports equipment, ongoing paramilitary purchases totaling $715 million for arming and training ‘Special Agents.'” It also shows how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funds data mining and equipment allowing the agency to intrude into industrial businesses and carry out “force raids” to execute its regulations.

Paul Krugman, Nobel prizewinning economist, public intellectual; New York Times columnist

The thing I love about Paul Krugman is that he’s such a mighty touchstone of wrong. If he told you that day followed night you’d have to go out in the morning to check with a torch; if he told you that The Sopranos was the greatest TV series ever you’d suddenly realize having revisited all 86 episodes that, no, actually even Hannah Montana had sharper acting and deeper insights; so when he tells you that “terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization”, well you know, without even having to think about it, that for once in his political career Jeb Bush has called it dead right, and that yet again, as ever, Krugman couldn’t be further from the right end of the stick.

Yes of course terrorism can and may destroy our civilization.

And the reason it can and may do so has actually very little to do with what the terrorists may do it us. Rather it has to do with what they are helping enable us to do to ourselves.

By “we” I don’t mean all of us ‚Äì and almost certainly not you. I mean people like Paul Krugman. And presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). And Soros-funded attack dog Joe Romm. And CIA Director John Brennan. And Hillary Clinton. And French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who, just a month ago, in remarks one would like to hope he now very much regrets, declared that “climate change is a threat to peace” and a significant cause of terrorism.

What all the above have claimed about climate change is, of course, completely untrue. No there is absolutely no credible evidence to suggest that climate change is responsible for the Syrian refugee crisis, let alone for ISIS terrorism. In fact there is absolute no credible evidence that “climate change” ‚Äì in the “man-made global warming” sense ‚Äì has caused major harm to anyone, anywhere in the world, ever.

There is however no shortage of credible, verifiable evidence to show that terrorism is causing major harm to lots of people all the time. Not the as-yet-nameless “children of the future” forever being invoked by climate alarmists. But actual living, breathing people with names and families and jobs and dreams.

Just ask Ludo Boumbas: he knows. Oh, no, wait, you can’t: he died on Friday sprayed by an AK outside a cafe in Paris where he was celebrating a friend’s birthday. Boumbas was black (originally from the Congo) but I don’t think he would have had much sympathy with the whiny narcissistic bigots of #blacklivesmatter. We know this because on the spur of the moment he gallantly decided that the life of his white friend Chloe Clement was worth more, throwing himself in front of her and taking the bullets that would otherwise have killed her.

Maybe instead you could try speaking to one of the survivors of the Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan theatre where 80 of the crowd were murdered in cold blood. But you might have some difficulty because they’re in a state of shock. What they saw, no one in a peacetime Western democracy should ever be forced to see: a pregnant woman hanging from a window-ledge, so terrified by the horror within that she preferred to risk a 45 foot drop into the streets; people in wheelchairs being deliberately executed; men pleading (unsuccessfully) for the lives of their wives and girlfriends; screaming wounded being eviscerated with knives because, as one killer put it, “We’re here to make you go through what the innocent are suffering in Syria”; jihadists calmly, casually reloading their AKs for the next round of executions as their captive victims lay on the floor in an inch of gore not daring to move for fear of attracting attention; wounded and dying couples whispering their final attestations of love and devotion to one another…

We need to dwell on this stuff because, unlike “climate change”, it’s real.

We need unflinchingly to linger on every last ugly detail the better to fuel our rage against the people who make it possible.

And I’m not just thinking of the terrorists here. If we focus purely on them we’re never going to solve the problem. We’ll just end up with more empty, feel-good gestures like the current French air-strikes against Raqqa which will no doubt ‚Äì eventually, after much thoatclearing ‚Äì mutate slowly into a similarly pointless but vastly more expensive Coalition which will end up achieving in ISIS held territory what our previous interventions achieved in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya: ie really not much, except possibly to make things worse.

Not that I’m against military intervention per se ‚Äì and I dare say, when we go in, it will make us all feel better for a time. I just happen to agree on this one with Mark Steyn:

“…[W]ar is merely the sharpest tool of national strategy, and so, if you have no national strategy, there’s no point going to war. It’s a complete waste of time bombing some guy in the Iraqi desert when Angela Merkel is forcing a German village with 120 people to take 750 “refugees”. The overseas and home fronts have to be in sync.”

What he’s talking about here is “civilizational confidence”. Or rather, about the current lack thereof through much Western culture.

All those idiot politicians and commentators trying to make out that “climate change” is a bigger threat than “terrorism” they’re the perfect example of this malaise.

By speaking such palpable nonsense ‚Äì and apparently expecting people to take them at their word ‚Äì they are betraying many of the values on which the democracies of Western Civilization have been built and without which our democracies can all too easily be destroyed.

Here are a few of them:

Empiricism: the way in which, through observation and experiment, we learn to discern what is true from what is false. (eg not fiddling with temperature data records just because it suits your ideology; not saying people are dying of “climate change” when clearly, obviously, they aren’t)

Accountability: the duty politicians have to spend their money of those who elected them wisely, honestly and responsibly, rather than splurging it on imaginary problems.

Property rights: the responsibility of the state to create an environment in which its citizens’ property rights and lives are kept secure; and also that they are prioritized over those of non-citizens.

Equality before the law: no special excuses for minorities, however aggressive they may be in their demands for special privileges (eg courts where they get to make up their own local rules)

Free speech: by all means argue stuff like “the climate is changing, it’s all our fault and it’s the biggest threat of our age” ‚Äì but do have the grace to argue it from evidence rather than authority; and also, not to try to destroy your opposition with threats of vexatious RICO suits, ad homs, withdrawal of tenure, etc.

Values like these aren’t negotiable. They help form the bedrock of Western Civilization and are part of the reason we have advanced so quickly and enjoyed so much more peace and prosperity than those cultures ‚Äì such as the Islamic world’s ‚Äì which have rejected them. Yet what’s perfectly clear from the response to events in Paris by so many of our politicians and commentators is that they have lost all sense of what it is about our culture that makes it so precious and so worth defending.

What those terrorists did in Paris was sickening.

But hardly less sickening is the mentality whereby the likes of a Nobel-prize-winning public intellectual and a US presidential candidate can actually stand up and declare ‚Äì with those 130 murdered bodies barely cold in the morgue ‚Äì that “climate change” (which has hurt no one in the world) is a bigger threat than terrorism (which is hurting almost everyone in the world.)

It’s an ugly lie because it’s so disrespectful towards ‚Äì and, worse, dismissive of ‚Äì all those innocents who died for no better reason than that they wanted to enjoy a Friday night in Paris.

It’s a lazy lie because it serves the status quo (an endless round of never-ending global climate talks in which everyone gets to feel that they are doing something about an important problem) and ducks the challenge of the far greater threat now facing us all.

It’s a dangerous lie because by pusillanimously rejecting those values ‚Äì empiricism, accountability, property rights, equality before the law, free speech, the truth ‚Äì on which Western Civilization has been built, it gives succour and encouragement to those who would destroy it.

Britain will shut polluting coal-fired power plants by 2025, its government said Wednesday ahead of November’s key UN climate change talks in Paris.

All coal power stations that do not have the technology to capture carbon emissions will be closed within ten years, the government said in a statement, in line with its pledge to phase out coal.

Environmentalists gave the announcement a cautious welcome, but warned that the government planned to switch to gas, rather than cleaner technology like wind or solar power.

The news comes before the UN Conference of Parties (COP21) summit, due in Paris from November 30 to December 11, where world leaders aim to forge an international deal to curb carbon emissions and stave off the worst effects of global warming.

Coal is widely regarded as the power source responsible for most carbon emissions.

“We are tackling a legacy of underinvestment and ageing power stations which we need to replace with alternatives that are reliable, good value for money, and help to reduce our emissions,” said British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd.

“It cannot be satisfactory for an advanced economy like the UK to be relying on polluting, carbon intensive 50-year-old coal-fired power stations.

“Let me be clear: this is not the future.”

Britain already plans to close three of its 12 coal power stations by 2016, so Wednesday’s announcement relates to the nine other facilities.

Those coal plants equipped with carbon capture systems will however continue to operate.

The normally humming French capital went quiet in the aftermath of last week’s terrorism, as any civilized city would. But one hardy group won’t be kept from its appointed rounds. Absurdity knows no bounds.

Much of Paris shut down in the hours and days after Friday’s terrorist attacks. Events were canceled; theaters, museums, schools, libraries and markets were closed, and the Eiffel Tower faded to black.

But not to worry: The horrific bloodshed won’t affect the United Nations climate summit scheduled to begin at month’s-end. It’s still on.

But then, that’s expected. The alarmist community has a crisis it can’t let go to waste. As Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, has tweeted, the meeting “proceeds as planned. Even more so now.”

Though at least 129 died and several hundred more were wounded in the attacks, and despite the deadly reality that played out in front of the world on television screens and computer monitors, some people still believe that global warming is mankind’s most serious security threat.

These people need to stop their glassy-eyed gazing and do some clear-eyed observing. The real world is different from the one they see in their heads.

One of the gazers wants to be leader of the free world — Sen. Bernie Sanders, who summarized the threat seen by leftists at the Democratic presidential debate last Saturday. Even as blood ran and ashes smoldered in the streets of Paris, he claimed, with the smarmy confidence found only in someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.”

“If we do not get our act together and listen to what the scientists say, you’re going to see countries all over the world — this is what the CIA says — they’re going to be struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts of land to grow their crops. And you’re going to see all kinds of international conflict,” Sanders said.

A day later on CBS, Sanders elaborated: “When people migrate into cities and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment, and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al-Qaida and ISIS are using right now.”

Even some government officials who are charged with keeping the country safe — not just those CIA officials whom Sanders spoke of but Pentagon officials as well — believe climate change is causing, or will cause in the future, more terrorism. If we could just beat global warming, they imply, we’d beat terrorism.

We don’t doubt that drought and famine can lead to unrest and violence. But blaming terrorism on man’s carbon dioxide emissions is a stretch no grade-schooler should make. Yet adults repeatedly make this argument in public and show no shame or embarrassment for carrying on like political hacks.

So come terror or heavy snow, the Paris talks will go on as planned. With that in mind, here are a few things to think about while the climate alarmists yammer on about what a threat global warming is:

¬ï Which of the two threats has actually killed someone, global warming or terrorism?

¬ï Which threat has guns and bombs, and is eager to use them on innocent lives?

¬ï Which said after the Paris attacks that “American blood is best, and we will taste it soon”?

¬ï Which threat beheads and burns alive innocent people?

¬ï Which threat believes it is doing the work of God?

¬ï Which threat is suicidal, making it all the more dangerous?

None of these questions will be answered by anyone attending the Conference of Parties to the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris, because none will be asked. Nor will anyone ask who’ll pay for the economic damage that the conferees’ “solutions” will cause.

But then, everyone knows the United States will be stuck with most of the bill — which is exactly what the global warming racket is all about.

Once again, the sky is falling. Only this time it’s the ocean that is rising, but the narrative is the same. The world as we know it is coming to an end ‚Äì that is, unless we enact crippling new carbon taxes, write ever bigger checks to corrupt dictators and U.N. agencies, and reward the host of professional doomsters who are pushing this scam.

The U.N.-sponsored International Climate Conference, which opens in Paris at the end of the month, is already generating more than its share of hot air.

Once the 85 presidents and prime ministers, and thousands of other bureaucrats, activists, journalists, and lobbyists arrive, the Paris conference will turn into a carbon circus, with every environmentalist in town warning of greater catastrophes.As such, it will resemble nothing so much as the medieval Dance of Death ‚Äì the fabled revels of those caught up in the Great Plague, who, according to legend, caroused in the streets in expectation of imminent doom.

The doom this time comes in the form of CO2, a harmless substance that has pervaded the atmosphere in various amounts since the Earth’s creation. Acting on the unproven theory that increased carbon levels raise the Earth’s temperatures, the Paris conferees are determined to impose global limits on carbon “pollution.”

What the Paris doomsters won’t admit is that higher carbon levels of the past 200 years have had little effect if any on global temperatures, and that whatever change may have occurred has been for the good. Marginally higher temperatures of the past century, whether from human or natural causes, have increased agricultural production since higher CO2 levels prompt faster plant growth and warmer temperatures expand planting zones. If they were doing their jobs, climate scientists would be calculating how many lives have been saved as a result of higher global temperatures, not the unlikely possibility of celebrity beach homes being flooded in the distant future.

I suspect that most of the Paris conferees really don’t care. They aren’t interested in the science; they’re interested in dollars ‚Äì hundreds of billions of dollars, to be transferred from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers to crooked political leaders in developing nations and to environmental activists everywhere. If the most radical proposals of climate alarmists were to be implemented in full, the effect on climate would be imperceptible. The ocean would rise or fall, according to natural cycles, and storms would be no better or worse.

The Paris doomsters aren’t interested in the record of storms, either. With the end of the Atlantic hurricane season just weeks away, not one hurricane has made significant landfall in the U.S. in the last ten years. (Superstorm Sandy made landfall in the Northeast as a tropical storm, having touched the Outer Banks as a Category One hurricane.) How is it that fewer catastrophic storms are occurring, in the U.S. and elsewhere, as CO2 levels continue to rise?

No worries! Government agencies continue to skew the data to overcome the inconvenient facts. Just ahead of the Paris conference, NOAA “adjusted” its findings to rebut data that showed global temperatures falling over the past 15 years, not rising. Apparently, when money and power are at stake, science takes a back seat.

Make no mistake: the money and power are huge. What’s at stake is, in effect, a global takeover of the entire energy sector and everything dependent on energy, from oil and gas to electric utilities to construction and transportation. World leaders are salivating over what could be done with the profits from those industries: the votes to be bought, the arms purchased to repress one’s own people, the permanent subjection of liberty. Global hoodlums have been trying to get their hands on this pile of cash for 30 years, ever since environmentalists began issuing their speculative claims of global warming, and now they see their chance.

According to reports, the major obstacle to an agreement has nothing to do with achieving the goal of controlling global temperatures ‚Äì something that is impossible to accomplish, in any case. The main obstacle under discussion is how much the world’s developed nations will fork over to developing nations. One hundred billion dollars, the goal of the failed Copenhagen climate summit, has been deemed insufficient. Third-world fraudsters have their sights set on much greater sums.

If Obama agrees to these demands, as he may by amending the 1992 Kyoto treaty ‚Äì thus bypassing the need for Senate approval ‚Äì the sky really will begin falling, and the Dance of Death can commence. It will be a Dance of Death, quite literally, for all those in the developing world who live on the margin of survival and who see their commodity and grain prices increase as a consequence of global carbon restrictions. It will also be a metaphorical Dance of Death for American business, especially for the utility and energy sectors but for others as well. Stricter regulations for transportation firms means lower profits and fewer jobs. Energy costs for schools, hospitals, and the public sector will increase. Carbon regulation is a tax that filters through the entire economy.

In the thick of all this doom and gloom, President Obama will be there, nose held high, basking in the glory of his environmental “legacy.” That legacy will not lower the Earth’s temperatures or cause the oceans to part, as he imagines, but it will raise the cost of everything produced by the global economy. The burden will fall on all consumers but most heavily on the poor. For a middle-class couple, a 20% increase in utility bills is an annoyance; for a poor family, it can drive them to a homeless shelter. For the world’s poorest, it means starvation.

Maybe the sky is falling after all, but not as a result of global warming. It’s falling because of the unconstrained greed and arrogance of global leaders like President Obama. If a global agreement is reached to take control of the energy sector, it will be the end for the U.S. and other developed nations. Decades from now, we will realize that there was never any danger of a climate catastrophe, but a greater catastrophe will have taken place. Governments will control one of the last relatively free sectors of the economy, and they’ll use those profits to imprison their own people.

One definition of propaganda is the information, ideas or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc. Its roots are traced back to the Latin phrase: congregation for propagating the faith.

This definition does not precisely capture an effort at Southern Methodist University to prevent grade-school students from learning there are two sides to the global-warming debate. But if we said that some of the fine folks at SMU are book burners, that wouldn’t be accurate either.

It’s not far from reality, though.

While students and faculty members were busy losing their minds at other universities over perceived and even some fabricated slights earlier this week, SMU Research issued a long news release complaining that California 6th grade science books say that climate change is a matter of opinion, not scientific fact.

“Climate skeptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts — even though scientists who refute global warming total a miniscule (sic) number,” wrote Diego Roman, identified as an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning.

Of course the news release refers to the study that supposedly says that 97% of scientists believe that man is causing Earth to overheat, which isn’t true, as we have shown. But it’s a number that has seeped into widespread use and is frequently cited uncritically. But propagandists never allow canards to stop them. In fact, lies are their fuel.

While Roman and his associates aren’t urging a mob to toss the books into a giant bonfire, they do want them replaced with text books that clarify “what exactly is unknown and why.” They are also recommending “the inclusion of humans as agents and as the cause of climate change.” After getting students all worked up, Roman and his associates want text books to include “specific actions students can take to produce change.” Nothing like indoctrinating young minds and mobilizing students into shock troops to bedevil their parents about their CO2 emissions. Later, these kids will be college students — and recent days have shown us how they behave after being nursed for years with left-wing militancy.

There is so much wrong with the news release, but that’s typical of those who believe that human carbon dioxide emissions are burning our planet. They feel that they have to propagate the faith. They want to spread their religion.

They don’t mind labeling those who don’t agree with them, though. To Roman and associates, we’re “deniers.” As Anthony Watts of the Watts Up With That blog points out, it’s an offensive term the Associated Press has stopped using. But when we look at their plans to sanitize text books, we wonder who’s doing the denying.

Britain will no longer pursue green energy at all costs and will instead make keeping the lights on the top priority, Amber Rudd, the energy secretary, will vow this week. Households already face paying over-the-odds for energy for years to come as a result of expensive subsidies handed out to wind and solar farms by her Labour and Lib Dem predecessors, Ms Rudd will warn. a major speech setting out a new strategy, the energy secretary is expected to say that from now on, policies will balance “the need to decarbonise with the need to keep bills as low as possible”.”Energy security has to be the first priority. It is fundamental to the health of our economy and the lives of our people,” she will say. —Emily Gosden, The Sunday Telegraph, 15 November 2015

India has blocked G20 efforts to pave the way for an ambitious climate change accord in a sign of deep divisions just two weeks before delegates from almost 200 nations meet in Paris. Through almost 20 hours of talks at the G20 gathering in Turkey officials struggled to bridge a political chasm even over language suggesting a common problem required a collective solution. A senior EU official at the meeting of world leaders in Antalya said: “At certain times I was feeling that we’re not living on the same planet.” Most significantly India and Saudi Arabia opposed the inclusion of a reference in the G20 statement to the need to discuss a “review mechanism” that the EU and many economies say must be a central feature of the accord. If other big economies follow suit, the weakening of the final accord would raise doubts about the UN’s ability to do anything to combat climate change. —Alex Barker and Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 16 November 2015

Speaking for developing countries, in his address to the G-20 Leaders, Prime Minister Modi will voice strong objections to the environment and social safeguards standards being pushed by the World Bank and other multilateral agencies for project finance and loans. He will call for a balance at the Conference of Parties (COP) 21 December talks in Paris so that development is not compromised as a result of the focus on climate change. Mr. Modi is also expected to emphasise that the commitment from the developed countries to make available from 2020 $100 billion of climate finance every year to developing countries has to be ensured and a road map for this should be laid down over the next five years. — Puja Mehra, The Hindu, 15 November 2015

In the first nine months of this year, state-owned companies received preliminary or full approval to build the 155 coal power plants that have a total capacity of 123 gigawatts, the report said. That capacity is equal to 15 percent of China’s coal-fired power capacity at the end of 2014. The construction boom — with capital costs estimated by Greenpeace at $74 billion — is a clear sign that China remains entrenched in investment-driven growth, despite promises by leaders to transform the economic model to one based on consumer spending. —Edward Wong, The New York Times, 11 November 2015

The ice reached its extent for the year last month – and it was the first time it reduced in size for the past four years – but that is largely being blamed on the El Nino Pacific weather effect.

The years 2012 to 2014 were each record-breaking in terms of the scale of the ice since satellite measurements began 37 years ago.

A NASA spokesman said: “This year’s maximum extent is both the 22nd lowest and the 16th highest. More remarkably, this year’s maximum is quite a bit smaller than the previous three years, which correspond to the three highest maximum extents in the satellite era, and is also the lowest since 2008.”

The news comes after earlier this month NASA revealed that a new study of the Antarctic from space found more new ice has formed at the Antarctic than has been lost to its thinning glaciers over several years.

It has done little to reduce the confusion around the climate change debate, with NASA also confirming today the amount of carbon in our atmosphere has reached record post-industrial highs.

A NASA video shows the evolution of the sea ice cover of the Southern Ocean from its minimum yearly extent to its peak extent.

The growth of Antarctic sea ice was erratic this year.

Sea ice was at much higher than normal levels throughout much of the first half of 2015 until, in mid-July, it flattened out and even went below normal levels in mid-August.

The sea ice cover recovered partially in September, but still this year’s maximum extent is 513,00 square miles below the record maximum extent, which was set in 2014.

Scientists believe this year’s strong El Ni√±o event, a natural phenomenon that warms the surface waters of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, had an impact on the behaviour of the sea ice cover around Antarctica.

Despite the 129 dead and the hundreds more wounded, The Ecologist has cut through all the emotive nonsense about the Paris massacres and identified the real victim of this grisly affair: why, the forthcoming UN climate change conference, of course!

Some would argue that with France in a state of emergency, Paris terrorized, and with many of the bodies so hideously mutilated they haven’t yet been identified, that perhaps it’s a bit too early to make extremely tenuous links between an act of Islamist terrorism and global warming.

But The Ecologist’s Oliver Tickell ‚Äì son of Margaret Thatcher’s former climate adviser Sir Crispin Tickell ‚Äì has no such qualms.

He asks:

Is it a coincidence that the terrorist outrage in Paris was committed weeks before COP21, the biggest climate conference since 2009?

Yes, probably it is a coincidence, he goes on to concede. Even so the ISIS attack has made the failure of COP21 significantly more likely:

Yes, negotiators will still be arguing over square brackets in texts as they always do. But the potential of important ‘big picture’ climate deals cemented between presidents and prime ministers now look less likely than before ‚Äì for the simple reason that world leaders are likely to take the opportunity of COP21 to talk about more immediately pressing security matters.

So with world leaders distracted from questions of climate, the prospects of serious inter-governmental agreement on the key issues at stake in the talks ‚Äì from climate finance to the legal status of any agreement reached ‚Äì have just receded.

You mean, Oliver, that because of the events in Paris world leaders are now less likely to be thinking about the vainglorious quest to adjust global mean temperatures by a fraction of a degree by the end of the century and more concerned with more real and present threats like the imminent threat that their citizens will be massacred by deranged fanatics from a pan-global Islamist death cult?

Say it ain’t so.

But Tickell isn’t done yet. His parting insight is to bracket oil producers in the same category as ISIS.

So, assuming ‚Äì as seems probable at this stage ‚Äì that the Paris outrage was carried out by or for ISIS, was it in any way motivated by a desire to scupper a strong climate agreement at COP21? And so maintain high demand for oil long into the future, together with a high oil price?

Let’s just say that it could have been a factor, one of several, in the choice of target and of their timing. And of course ISIS was not necessarily acting entirely on its own. While not alleging direct collusion between ISIS and other oil producing nations and companies, it’s not hard to see a coincidence of interests.

I love that use of the phrase “not alleging direct collusion”. Presumably, then, he’s not averse to alleging indirect collusion.

As for all those shale oil producers in Texas, rig workers in the North Sea, and operators on the tar sands in Canada: I bet up until now they had just no idea how closely their interests were aligned with those of the world’s most dangerous terror group.

Noonan argued that Sanders’ statement “makes him to many people look slightly daffy like someone who doesn’t understand what the real subject is” because “[t]his is about terrorism. This isn’t about climate change and deserts and people migrating because it’s hot.”

Earlier in the segment, CBS reporter Nancy Cordes, who served as one of the questioners during last night’s Democratic debate, praised Sanders’ “good night” and eagerly touted his stance on income inequality which was “really in his wheelhouse”:

[Y]ou could almost see him chomping at the bit to get past foreign policy and get into the issues where he’s the strongest. Talking about single payer, for example. Talking about a $15 minimum wage which was a really striking debate last night between him saying it should be $15 no matter what, Hillary Clinton saying that could have unintended consequences, I’m more comfortable with $12. But you’re right, clearly more Democrats came down on his side.

While Cordes was quick to praise Sanders’ performance during last night’s debate, Noonan quickly brought the conversation back to reality and how his views on terrorism were out of step with the world:

[W]orking against him was I believe the fact that last night and more strikingly today on your show, Bernie Sanders essentially said a major problem with all of this ISIS stuff and terrorism and what’s going at the west is climate change and global warming which makes him to many people look slightly daffy like someone who doesn’t understand what the real subject is.

See relevant transcript below.

CBS’s Face the Nation

November 15, 2015

JOHN DICKERSON: Let me ask you, Nancy, about in our poll of independents and Democrats who were watching Bernie Sanders didn’t do well on foreign policy front but on the economic front, Sanders on the question of who can handle the economy, Sanders came out of 43, Clinton at 40. When it comes to income inequality, on that issue, he got 58% and Hillary Clinton got 31. SO on the issues Democrats care about it was good night for him.

NANCY CORDES: It was a good night for him. And I think that the issue of income equality was really in his wheelhouse you could almost see him chomping at the bit to get past foreign policy and get into the issues where he’s the strongest. Talking about single payer, for example. Talking about a $15 minimum wage which was a really striking debate last night between him saying it should be $15 no matter what, Hillary Clinton saying that could have unintended consequences, I’m more comfortable with $12. But you’re right, clearly more Democrats came down on his side.

PEGGY NOONAN: But, working against him was I believe the fact that last night and more strikingly today on your show, Bernie Sanders essentially said a major problem with all of this ISIS stuff and terrorism and what’s going at the west is climate change and global warming which makes him to many people look slightly daffy like someone who doesn’t understand what the real subject is, and is leaning outside to sort of leftist, or Progressive nostrims [sic] that he can talk about. This is about terrorism. It isn’t about climate change and deserts and people migrating because it’s hot.

Renewable Portfolio Standard advocates recently held their 2015 National Summit. The draft RPS agenda suggests it was quite an event ‚Äì populated by bureaucrats, scientists and consultants who have jumped on the climate and “green energy” bandwagon, to follow the money.

Indeed, they are no longer content with 10% corn ethanol in gasoline, or some wind and solar power in the electricity mix. Now they want to convert the entire electrical grid from fossil-fuels to renewable sources and, if Catholic bishops get their way, totally eliminate hydrocarbons by 2050, despite the horrendous impacts that would have on workers, families and the world’s poorest people.

There’s certainly a lot of money to be made. The green revolution is estimated at $1.5 trillion per year, which means potentially huge profits for those with political connections. Many who are making big bets on green technologies are ultra-wealthy people who say they are protecting the planet, when they really seem to be “protecting their wealth for future generations” of family members and cronies.

One is Ward McNally, great-great-great grandson of the founder of Rand McNally maps. He and 11 other billionaire families created the Green Tech Syndicate in 2010. So far they have invested $1.4 billion in green schemes ‚Äì for a greener environment, but mostly to put still more green in their bank accounts.

Wags might suggest that “syndicate” is a perfect name, as it recalls Capone, Cosa Nostra, yazukas and tongs. But what they are doing seems perfectly legal, if not always in the public interest. And the “climate crisis” foundation of this vast enterprise seems increasingly based on exaggerated, manipulated, even fabricated science, data, computer scenarios and official reports ‚Äì and on silencing CAGW skeptics.

President Obama is the piper leading the nation and world to a green Shangri La. As he continues to impose policies that move the US economy away from fossil fuels and toward pseudo-alternatives, he is calling for public and private investments. The Clean Energy Investment Initiative, for example, seeks investors who will plow $2 billion into wind, solar and other infrastructure projects ‚Äì all of them augmented with money from taxpayers and consumers who have no voice in the decisions.

There’s another problem: Fossil fuels remain more affordable than renewable energy, a better value for consumers and generally better for the environment. For green investors and the Administration, this means coal, oil and natural gas must be made more costly, so that renewables can compete. What to do?

As a 2014 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff investigation revealed, a cabal of billionaires, millionaires, foundations and “charitable” organizations are colluding to smear fossil fuels and scare Americans about fracking and climate change. They funnel millions of dollars into far-left environmentalist groups, which launch campaigns and create phony grassroots groups that hold protests and spread more anti-fossil fuel propaganda, to kill projects and jobs and reduce living standards.

Using an Amazon-sized river of cash, these 0.1 Percenters buy the services of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, American Lung Association and many similar groups, to stir up fear, loathing and opposition among the 99 Percenters. They want to make the electorate feel guilty about pseudo-problems: the plight of polar bears, rising asthma rates, and “environmental injustice” ‚Äì the claim that minorities are disproportionately affected by fossil fuels and “dangerous manmade climate change.”

Their “charitable” contributions fund 350.org and its battles against fossil fuels. Founder Bill McKibben has called the organization “a scruffy little outfit” with “almost no money.” But between 2011 and 2014 it received multiple six-figure grants from outfits like the Park Foundation, Marisla Foundation, Tides Foundation, Climate Works Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and Rockefeller Family Foundation ‚Äì with much of the money passed through the Sustainable Markets Foundation.

The Senate report says such pass-throughs allow secretive donors to remain anonymous and get tax deductions for contributing to a supposed charity. Last year, 350.org spent more than $8.3 million on anti-fossil fuel activities around the globe.

But 350.org pales in comparison to the Energy Foundation (EF), the “quintessential example of a pass through.” The report says EF receives huge sums from the Sea Change Foundation, which gets money from Vlad Putin cronies and whose other “major donors are heavily invested in renewable technologies.”

Sadly, this is not the first time a greedy few have elevated their interests over the needs of working-class consumers. A prime example is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). With its ethanol mandate, the RFS was pitched to the public as a way to wean America off foreign oil, which fracking does much better. But one of its primary goals was to “incentivize” the U.S. ethanol industry. It certainly did that.

Since the RFS was passed ten years ago, the clever racket that gives influential 0.1 Percenters sway over environmental and energy policy has become increasingly sophisticated and less transparent. The RFS was negotiated openly, but today’s policies appear to be generated by a group of insiders who put profits over honesty and fairness, and rabid environmentalism over the well-being of our nation and citizens.

Indeed, EPA justifies the ethanol mandate by claiming it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). However, even the Environmental Working Group says ethanol puts more carbon dioxide into the air, not less. In October, the EPA Inspector General said it would investigate ethanol’s impact on GHGs.

Unfortunately, most Americans do not comprehend the huge self-interest behind the green movement, nor its harmful effects and minimal benefits. EPA’s anti-coal Clean Power Plan, for example, will sharply hike electricity rates and lower household incomes by $2,000 a year ‚Äì but reduce global temperatures by only 0.02 degrees C (0.03F) over the next 85 years, assuming CO2 actually drives climate change!

In reality, global temperatures haven’t warmed in 19 years, no category 3-5 hurricane has hit the United States in ten years, Antarctic sea ice is expanding, and seas are rising at just seven inches a century. But anyone who questions climate chaos mantras faces vilification, and worse. Famed French meteorologist Philippe Verdier was fired from his TV job after calling climate change hype a “global scandal.” A Paris journalist says Verdier was the victim of an “outrageous, unjust, ridiculous” climate “fatwa.”

But these critically important facts get short shrift in the radical world of climate cataclysm. They will certainly be ignored at the upcoming UN climate gabfest in Paris. Legions of bureaucrats and activists will gather there to plot global governance, energy restrictions and wealth redistribution ‚Äì while crushing debate and free speech, to prevent the world from learning the truth about climate chaos deception.

Returning to the RPS conference, its agenda notes that Day Two was closed to the public and open only to selected federal and state officials. That’s because a major discussion topic was the scheduled reduction in federal solar tax credits, from 30% to 10% at the end of 2016. Green investors are up in arms, have launched a TV ad blitz, and wanted to lobby officials privately for expanded government largess.

Wake up, America. The ruling class and rich elites are picking your pockets. Don’t get snookered by the president’s claim that climate change is the biggest threat to future generations. Don’t blithely assume the government is working in your best interests. (That’ll be the day.) Don’t buy claims that the enemy is corporate greed. That ancient diversionary tactic is designed to make you look the other way, while the Green Cabal, Climate Crisis, Inc. and renewable opportunists enrich themselves at your expense.

Above all, pay attention to next year’s elections. Your own and your children’s futures are at stake.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author ofEco-Imperialism:Green Power ‚Äì Black Death.